


Chance Encounters

by omphale23



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Multi, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people in the life of Michael Westen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chance Encounters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Queue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/gifts).



> Many thanks to **dessert_first** for her fantastic beta efforts in the final hour. And this may not be quite what Queue asked for, but maybe the next one will be closer?

** _Atlanta, 1991_ **

 

When he landed in Georgia, torn duffel over his shoulder and seventeen dollars in his pocket, Michael was pretty sure that his life couldn't get any more complicated.

 

He was wrong about that.

 

***

** _Berlin, 1992_ **

 

Sam was decompressing after five days in a van waiting for an arms deal to go wrong. Michael was barely a soldier and still wet behind the ears, but he was smart and quick and Sam must have seen something he wanted. They ended up sharing beers and bitching about training exercises.

 

If Michael sat a bit too close, well. Sam was busy sprawling in the corner of the booth, eyes clear and mouth quirked into a tiny smile as Michael started to feel the effects of sleep deprivation and Bavarian lager at the same time.

 

When they stumbled out into the street hours later, Michael was sure that his luck had changed.

 

Unfortunately, Sam was a gentleman at heart. Michael woke up the next morning in his bunk, a canteen of water and bottle of aspirin on the floor next to him.

 

A month later, he was transferred to counterinsurgency training.

 

***

** _Cologne, 1994_ **

 

The first time they met, she shot him.

 

And Michael deserved it. He'd broken into her apartment, looking for details on a Belgrade weapons factory, and been in too much of a hurry to double check for a back entrance. It was a rookie screw up and, if nothing else, meeting Fiona kept him from ever making the same mistake again.

 

She never let him live it down, that moment when he stood in her bedroom, facing a tiny woman with a pistol steady in her hand, wearing a pink towel and a furious glare.

 

The first one was a warning, and Michael took it and ran, diving out an open window and limping back to his hotel room with his arm bleeding and his pride dented.

 

In the morning, there was a message at the front desk with the coordinates of the factory, a telephone number, and _Fiona_ printed at the bottom.

 

***

** _Luanda, 1996_ **

 

Sam hadn't changed. He was a little older, a little slower, but underneath the loud charm and careless flirting, he was still a gentleman.

 

Michael was not. Hadn't ever been, although sometimes he pretended to be polite in order to save on his dry cleaning.

 

So he didn't feel even a little bit guilty when he invited Sam in for coffee and they ended up on the floor of his living room, Sam looking a little bit shocked and a lot interested as Michael grinned down at him. He ended up missing a meeting the next day, but for once it was completely worth every minute he spent on the phone trying to come up with a lie good enough to convince Dan that it wouldn't happen again.

 

In another decade, on another continent, Michael only asked what it was that Sam did for his girlfriends because he already knew the answer.

 

***

** _Vienna, 1997_ **

 

Fiona showed up at his hotel before Michael had even unpacked. She walked into his room, tucking a pin back into her hair. By the time he had his gun out she was already sliding out of her heels and dropping her bag on the nightstand.

 

Michael didn't often find himself at a loss but Fiona tended to leave him unsure of whether it would be better to run or to ask questions.

 

She walked to the window, unbuttoning her shirt and ignoring him completely as she reached out and pulled the curtains shut. In the dimness of the room, she turned toward Michael, dropped her shirt on the floor, and climbed onto the bed, settling down against the pillows and grinning up at him.

 

Michael thought about the last time they'd met, in a seedy motel in Vancouver. He'd checked in on a Tuesday, and checked back out on Friday morning, scratches healing across his back and with a bruise on his hip that he couldn't even remember getting. They left sixty dollars on the television to pay to replace the showerhead. It didn't seem like enough, but at least he'd managed to rewire the broken lamp and tighten the screws on the bed.

 

Fiona was waiting, looking impatient as he stood at the end of the bed and let himself remember. Michael shrugged as he dragged his shirt over his head and kicked his shoes off.

 

When he got back from a meeting that night, she'd scrawled _thanks_ in pink lipstick on the mirror.

 

***

** _Montreal, 1998_ **

 

Lucy was a kid, no more than twenty. She was also his responsibility. Through some set of circumstances known only by bureaucrats and analysts a thousand miles away, he'd been assigned a rookie even though he had no idea what to do with her.

 

Michael was sure that he'd never looked so young, or been so naive.

 

Still. She was bright, and she knew how to listen. That would have to be enough. By the time he was given another assignment, Michael was pretty sure that Lucy was going places. And when she showed up at his door the night before he left, grinning up at him and wearing a dress that didn't leave a lot to the imagination, Michael knew her well enough to be sure that his refusal would be taken for what it was-a tactical decision, rather than a personal rejection.

 

***

** _Paris, 1999_ **

 

Fiona didn't answer her phone. Michael told himself that she was fine, could take care of herself.

 

But he was still relieved when she sent him a photo of herself, standing in the sun wearing a huge hat and cradling a mortar.

 

The caption read _Wish you were here_.

 

***

** _Istanbul, 2000_ **

 

He didn't know her name, only caught glimpses of short brown hair and a smile as she ducked into an alley. She wasn't who he wanted, was someone he needed to track and stop, and Michael didn't much care about much more than that.

 

He'd always been terrible at relationships, anyway.

 

***

** _Dublin, 2003_ **

 

In all honesty, he hadn't meant to disappear without saying goodbye. But events caught up with him, and the next thing he knew he was in a plane headed for Seoul. He hadn't had time to go back for his clothes, let alone tell Fiona goodbye.

 

Somehow, Michael suspected she wouldn't understand.

 

***

** _Salar Ban, 2005_ **

 

There were several things Michael learned before he left for Afghanistan.

_1\. His cover identity was an ex-operative, although the files never identified _which_ agency he'd worked for._

 

2\. Michel had been out for eight years, five months, and nine days.

 

3\. He was in love with someone he'd last seen in a Paris train station and would probably never meet again.

 

In the end, only the last point was important.

 

Michael parachuted into the mountains in November, dusty and bruised and wondering why this had seemed like a better idea than going back to Dublin. He was still wondering three weeks after that, when Michel Samuelle saved his ass in a deal gone bad and then disappeared back into the scenery.

 

It was a little odd to meet the guy he'd been pretending to be, but Michael was used to his life being a few steps left of center.

 

In March, they ended up in the same Kabul safe house. And it was always the waiting that interfered with his decisions, made things seem like a good idea when they weren't, started up the itch of nervousness and memories that Michael tried like hell to ignore any other time.

 

It was the waiting that made him look up as Michel walked into the room, grimy towel slung low over his hips and his hair plastered wetly across his forehead. It was the waiting that kept him from rolling over and falling asleep, the waiting that made Michael narrow his eyes and tilt his head as he thought about everything he knew about body language and intelligence operatives.

 

The next morning, Michael winced a little at the stretch of overworked muscles as he climbed out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Michel was long gone, although there was a new phone number programmed into his cell phone.

 

He threw the phone in the tub, filled it up, and packed for the airport.

 

Six months later, he found an old surveillance photo in his dossier, a younger Michel standing next to a thin blond girl. They weren't touching. They didn't need to.

 

***

** _Miami, 2007_ **

 

He wasn't worried about waking up covered in bruises. It was an occupational hazard.

 

It _was_ a little unnerving waking up in a room with Fiona in it, but when she didn't immediately shoot him or hit him with anything sharp, he figured he was forgiven. For the moment.

 

He grabbed his wallet off the floor and ducked out. When he opened it that night the slip of paper he'd been carrying since Cologne was gone; that should have been the end of it.

 

But when Michael drove onto the back of a truck in Sam's car he had Fiona's name and number written on the back of an envelope in his back pocket.

 

***

** _Washington, 2009_ **

 

Jason Bly didn't look pleased to see him sitting at a sidewalk table and sipping what, in any other city, would be considered a travesty of a latte. He didn't looked _displeased_, exactly, but there definitely wasn't the spark of welcome in his eyes.

 

Fair enough, given that the last time they'd seen each other Michael had been threatening to ruin his life.

 

Still. No reason they couldn't be friends now. Or more than that, maybe.

 

He grinned and pushed out a chair with his foot. Jason settled into it, and Michael waited for him to glance down at a menu before he glanced over at the bar, where Fiona was watching them both with a smile on her face.

 

She held up a napkin that read _yes_.

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